Cole searched through a list of evidence seized from Tiede's home and found several books about surviving childhood sexual abuse. She went to the pen and interviewed Tiede, who reluctantly divulged a history of severe sexual abuse by an uncle during his adolescence. His claim was corroborated by independent evidence including testimony of another victim and evidence from the uncle himself.

Cole took this new evidence to two psychiatrists, one of whom interviewed Tiede in prison. That psychiatrist, Richard B. Pesikoff, found that the sexual trauma Tiede had suffered as a child and teenager conditioned him to go to a faraway place in his head when confronted with extreme trauma, then come back and forget or ignore whatever he had done.

Pesikoff said in his report: "The shooting of Mrs. Nugent, in the opinion of this examiner, represented for Mr. Tiede the condensation and symbolization of everything evil and abusive that he had experienced in his life."

Davidson told me he was not impressed at first. "I thought, 'Well hell, he's for hire. What do you expect a defense expert to say? Exactly what the defense wants him to say.'"

Davidson went back to the psychiatrist who had testified for the prosecution in the 1999 trial, Dr. Edward Gripon. Gripon agreed to interview Tiede, something he had not been able to do before the original trial. Gripon examined him for more than eight hours.

"Four days later [Gripon] calls me," Davidson said, "and he said, 'I agree with Pesikoff.' Well, the bombshell had hit, man. You talk about shocked, I was tee-totally shocked."

Davidson said he had to face the fact that Texas law at the time of Nugent's murder allowed a sentence of no more than 20 years in which there was "sudden passion arising from an adequate cause." Even if Davidson had won a 20-year max sentence in 1999, Tiede, now a model prisoner incarcerated continually for 17 years, would have been paroled somewhere between his 10th and 15th year behind bars. Davidson agreed with the judge who released Tiede that the matter probably had to be revisited by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, where it rests now awaiting a decision.

Hollandsworth still thinks his original story changed nothing. But he says, "the fact is that not every defendant gets a filmmaker behind him. You can't take that away. Let's not be naive. If it wasn't for the movie, there would have been no movement to get Bernie out of prison."

But Davidson says the reaction of people in Carthage to the movie was not at all sympathetic, due in part to a generational shift.

"All these elderly folks that loved Bernie, they've all made one trip to the cemetery and have not come away from the cemetery," he said. "And the people that we have now have seen a movie where a young guy is kind of romancing an old woman and ends up killing her, and he goes on and continues partying and spends her money."

The reaction of this younger generation of Carthaginians, he said, has been harsh: "They think based on the movie that he ought to be in the penitentiary until he dies."

In both instances — Davidson's original tough prosecution of Tiede and now his agreement a decade and a half later that Tiede may have been over-sentenced — Davidson says he has managed to put himself exactly on the wrong side of public opinion in Carthage.

"That's what I'm dealing with," he said, "kind of a perfect storm I've been in, in both directions. One time the tide was going out and the next time it's coming in. I'm fighting the tide both ways."

He said he would do it the same way. "I'm just trying to do what's right."

Bernie Tiede's murder of Marjorie Nugent has now been re-enacted for the public four times — in the media coverage before the trial, in the trial, in the movie and in this new chapter after the history of sexual abuse was uncovered. We all know that no re-enactment can capture truth perfectly. But can't some truth missed in the earlier tellings shine through in later ones? And then there is this: Never bet on East Texas to do what it's told.

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So, because of childhood sexual abuse, that hasn't been proven, you can murder an old woman, stuff her in a freezer and milk her bank account dry. It is simply no excuse. Davidson has spit on the victims grave.

East Texas folks. When they know what they're talking about, they're about as wise and colorful as it gets. But when they start talking about stuff they know absolutely nothing about; that's when it gets weird, even scary. I guess one could say that about a lot of folks, though.